ABSTRACT
In Polanyi's stylised history, nature comes increasingly to be thought of as the commodity 'land' in a process starting with English enclosures and ending with British colonialism. Polanyi's insights on relationship between environment and economy look no less relevant than those regarding money and finance. Polanyi lists possible victims of unchecked growth including, somewhat presciently, 'the climate of the country which might suffer from the denudation of forests, from erosions and dust bowls'. The chapter examines international environmental policy interventions rooted in notion of transcending this contradiction between habitation and improvement. Non-participation in emissions trading systems will always offer the double benefit of attracting polluting business and free-riding on the positive environmental effects of the efforts of participating countries. By looking at the development of concept of social cost in welfare economics, people have seen the theoretical roots of this consensus, stretching through Ronald Coase's theorem and its evolution through successive iterations of thought applying the model to environmental questions.
